What is the optimal anchor text variation?

Links are important. Too much similarity of the anchor text of inbound links can be bad. You need to vary it up. But what ratio of variation is optimal?

A lot of people reference 60%, 30%, 10% as a good ratio, referring to Keyword 1, Keyword 2 and keyword 3. This seems to have come from the days when the majority of inbound links were gained from blog commenting and directory submissions and other methods of link building that place anchor text in the webmasters control.

Nowadays the best links are naturally given and therefore don’t give control over the anchor text. This goes a lot of the way to solving the issue. However, if you are building links yourself it is important to be aware of variation.

If you haven’t secured the number one position for your company name, try using this as one of your key phrases. If you do get the opportunity to provide links on a blog post, using anchor text such as “click here” can also help vary it up.

Semantics are becoming more important in the world of search and attempts, if you have to opportunity to control some of your inbound links have a look at the wonder wheel to see what Google deems relevant to the terms you are targeting. Use these terms and other random and individual terms as anchor text to vary up the backlink profile.

No one really knows what variation of anchor text really works or if there is a set variation, as long as your backlink profile isn’t starting to look spammy then you’ll be doing ok.

Did you know that when you link to one of my posts I aim to provide a search engine friendly, contextual link back to your website where possible? Also after a couple of relevant comments your links will be approved as dofollowed. Why wait to get involved?